International rock star speaks at Aquavision 2014

“Meeting tomorrow today” was the theme of this year’s Aquavision, a top notch industry event that brought together a broad range of speakers from all continents to provide attendees with invaluable information, insight and opinion about the future of aquaculture. The event was organised by Skretting and its parent company Nutreco in co-operation with DNB and DSM Nutritional Products.

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From June 16-18, Stavanger was the stage for the 10th Aquavision, welcoming more than 400 delegates from 45 countries, including many top decision makers from the aquaculture industry. Stavanger is also were Skretting’s headquarters are located, the organisers of the event.

Skretting, part of Nutreco, has an important mission: ‘Feeding the Future’. This mission was clearly reflected throughout the conference as many speakers addressed the growing world population and how aquaculture can contribute sustainably to the growing demand for animal protein.

Knut Nesse, CEO of Nutreco officially opened the conference. ”2014 will be a milestone year where the per capita consumption of farmed fish will be greater than wild fish consumption," said Nesse. The figures are based on calculations from the FAO, saying that this year people on average eat 10.3kg of farmed fish and 9.7kg of wild fish per year.

Dr James Anderson from PROFISH, the World Bank, explained that the World Bank is seeking more investments in aquaculture, especially in disease management projects. ”We see huge growth in this business, mainly in India, Latin America and the Caribbean and Southeast Asia. But diseases are still a major problem and more knowledge should be gained on how to prevent them,” Anderson explained.

Jose Villalon, Corporate Sustainability Director at Nutreco said:“In the coming 40 years we have to provide more food than we did in the last 8,000 years. Land is limited, so we have to use our oceans to meet this growing food demand.” Villalon also mentioned that we now have the tools to prove that aquaculture is also a sustainable option for the future and that fish farmers have a licence to produce.

“I expect that the world economy and world population will grow at a slower pace than most people expect. Frankly, I also think there will be more poverty in 2040, both in the rich and poor countries, as not all countries can follow the success models from Japan and South Korea that turned their country into a technological driven economy,” said Professor Jorgen Randers from the Norwegian Business School.

Philippa Jones is managing director of the Beijing-based research and advisory company China Policy and spoke about the China paradox, meaning that decisions from the government are often difficult to implement in China. This can also account to aquaculture in this country. “At the same time, China is becoming realty sensitive to the environment, and has put a new environmental policy in place this year,” Jones said.

South African speaker Fred Formanek, managing partner at Advance Africa updated the audience about aquaculture in Africa and the West Indian Ocean Region. “Africa is a big market for China at the moment. China exports around 2,500 tonnes of tilapia to Africa on an annual basis. But there are also some really successful projects in Africa. Highland Trout, for example, is farmed in Lesotho and sold to Japan,” said Formanek.

Sir Bob Geldof was the keynote speaker of the event. In his keynote address, the rock star and poverty and environmental campaigner, said he believes that aquaculture can play its part by bridging the gap between sustainable fisheries and the global demand for seafood but that the industry can only hope to achieve this when systems are responsibly implemented and managed.

Harald Serck-Hanssen, Group Executive Vice President DNB Bank, told the audience that clean water, energy and food is what we need now and – even more - in the future. “Norway is the 2nd largest exporter of seafood. We as a Norwegian bank want to be a global bank when it comes to aquaculture and I believe that this sector remains an attractive one to debt and equity investors,” said Serck-Hanssen.

At AquaVision 2014, Stéphane Garelli, a world authority on competitiveness, delivered clear and provocative views on how to be competitive in 2014 and beyond. “Companies and nations must rethink the fundamentals of their competitiveness,” said Professor Garelli. “It takes a certain type of mind to see and seize the opportunities. Business leaders should be aware that conventionally competent people are not necessarily highly competitive.”

Professor David Robertson from the Wharton School and author of Brick by Brick gave an interesting insight in how the Danish company LEGO tried different methods to stay competitive and innovative. “It turned out the company had to look inside the box. LEGO reduced the number of bricks but created a whole ecosystem around the product, such as videogames, online applications and merchandise.”

Trond Wiliksen, CEO at the AKVA Group, said that there is still a technological and innovation gap between the commercially developed farmed fish species and the new species. “We cannot simply copy the knowledge from the salmon or tilapia industry to new species. And technology is not the only asset to success. It also comes down to proper management, general knowledge and experience about the (new)species, the regulatory framework and the market proposition.”

Lars Helge Stien, researcher at the Institute of Marine Research explained the snorkel sea cage his team has tested to reduce the sea lice infestation in salmon. Stien is also involved in many projects around fish welfare.

In line with the previous speaker, John A Breivik, General Manager at Stingray Marine Solution explained how laser can reduce sea lice on salmon. “Sea lice is one of the largest problems in salmon farms. We have developed a machine that uses laser pulse that eliminates sea lice when the fish swims along the machine in the sea cage. We are working on fine tuning the system and the price and time to shoot the lice are going down every day, while precision goes up,” Breivik explained.

Krijn Rietveld, senior vice president innovation at DSM Nutritional Products addressed the need for cooperation between companies to come to innovation. “Often, small companies run out of money to scale up their product and bring it to market. Larger companies should be aware of this and get involved.”

After his presentation Rietveld announced the winner of the DSM Innovation Award. The most innovative idea this year came from Egersund Net for their innovative sea lice tube/snorkel cage. The award represents €10,000.

Geirmund Vik, R&D manager at Egersund Net accepted the award and explained the company’s innovation to the audience.

Viggo Halseth, chief innovation officer at Nutreco, told the audience that Skretting’s ambition is to be independent of marine raw materials. “In the last 5 years we already used 50,000 mt marine oil and 115,000 mt marine protein LESS in our fish feed,” Halseth explained.

Halseth also explained the benefits gained from using the grower feed Optiline Premium. This feed is based on metabolic activators that increase the Atlantic salmon's utilisation of digestible energy. The result is higher slaughter yields and more edible fish.

Arne Hjeltnes, CEO at Creuna explained how effective a TV campaign was to promote the reputation of the Norwegian salmon industry. “The reputation of the product was good, but not the reputation of the farmers. So we made 26 different short television commercial clips, all with one person working in the aquaculture industry telling his or her story. We saw huge improvements in how people valued the industry after this campaign,” Hjeltnes explained.

“Sir Bob Geldof has been extremely complimentary about our industry and challenged us to find solutions that are good for business but also good for the planet,” said Steven Rafferty, managing director of Skretting, in his concluding remarks. Rafferty also revealed that following his speech, Sir Bob has offered his help and support to the industry after becoming very motivated by the people he met at AquaVision.

The next AquaVision, again organised by Skretting, will take place in 2016 and will mark the 20th year of the conference.